Located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and southwest of the Balkan Peninsula, Albania calls itself the "Land of mountain eagles". And this palm-sized country in the 20th century gave birth to a legendary figure Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania for half a century, the first secretary of the Albanian Workers' Party, and people will remember Albania because of his existence.
Born into a family of merchants in southern Albania, Hoxha studied in France as a young man, led anti-fascist guerrillas during World War II, and became the leader of the country after the war. From 1945 to 1985, he ruled for 40 years and was also a highly controversial man.
Hoxha
Albania under Hoxha's albanian industry, agriculture, and medical care have developed greatly, but in a small country of two million people, specializing in internal affairs cannot bring him such a reputation, and Hoxha is so famous because Albania under his rule is a mudslide in the international diplomatic community, known as the Gambia in Eastern Europe.
After the end of World War II, Hoxha was very close to the Soviet Union, and because he was in the socialist camp, Hoxha naturally blacked out Britain and the United States and severed diplomatic relations with Britain and the United States. In 1948, Albania blackmailed Yugoslavia because of the Soviet Union's feud with Yugoslavia. In 1956, the 20th Congress of the CPSU was convened, Khrushchev criticized Stalin, and as a fanatical admirer of Stalin, Hoxha began to criticize the Soviet Union and Khrushchev, and in 1961 completely blackmailed the Soviet Union. At this point, the world's five permanents have been blocked by 3 of them.
After severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, the United States threw an olive branch. But Albania rejected it one by one: we albanians, past, present and future, will not have anything to do with US imperialism.
After the events in Prague, Albania feared becoming the next Czech Republic, so it withdrew from the Warsaw Pact and blackmailed a number of Eastern European countries. At this time, only One of Albania's many allies remained, China. China also supported a large number of supplies, but Albania was not satisfied, and many lions opened their mouths. After the normalization of Sino-US relations, Hoxha actually asked Why China did not consult with Albania in advance, and Albania blocked China as well.
In Hoxha's perception, there is no longer a righteous country in the world, he said, "justice and justice are always in Albania." As a result, foreign languages were eliminated from education in Albania and Albania became an almost closed country.
The land of bunkers
Feeling that there was no righteous country in the world, Hoxha always felt that someone was going to invade Albania. After severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Hoxha put forward the slogan "The enemies of the whole world are about to die."
Hoxha had ordered the Albanian Air Force to take off with two aircraft, one for the mission and the other for surveillance, firing directly in the event of a mutiny. In his later years, he asked for three simultaneous take-offs, with the 3rd supervising the 2nd.
Hoxha felt that the repair of the bunker could increase the difficulty of the enemy's invasion and enhance the resistance of the resistance, so Albania began a vigorous operation to repair the bunker.
In just two decades, more than 700,000 concrete bunkers have been built in a country of more than 10,000 square meters, and on average, one bunker has been completed every hour. During the Hoxha period, on average, every 3 Albanians had a bunker.
Building so many bunkers cost three times as much as the Maginot Line and cost twice as much budget as the Maginot Line. But after the construction of these are completely useless, because Albania is too small and too poor to ask people to fight.
The Soviets calculated that it would take about four hundred thousand soldiers to demolish these bunkers one by one, and three thousand tanks would take two and a half years to attack.
Thus, after so many years of splurge in Hoxha, Albania has become the poorest country in Europe. When Hoxha died in 1985, the Party of Labor of Albania claimed that a man as great as Hoxha could not die, so Hoxha's tombstone had only a birthday and no death date.
After Hoxha's death, Albania could not remain isolated forever, so in 1991 the Party of Labor changed its name to the Socialist Party, held multi-party elections, and changed the name of the country to the Republic of Albania. In 1992, the opposition Democratic Party came to power Albania began to embrace capitalism for the first time, and this was the first time it jumped into the pit.
Ponzi scheme
The so-called Ponzi scheme is a term for today's financing and investment fraud, also known in China as "tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall", "empty glove white wolf", using the money of new investors to pay interest and short-term returns to old investors, thereby defrauding more investments.
The sudden capitalism caught Albania off guard, the treasury was clanging poor, the transformation of the former National Day was difficult, and a large number of bankruptcies were lost. The loans of the National Bank of Albania are basically loaned to state-owned enterprises, and after the bankruptcy of state-owned enterprises, Albania's bad debt rate reached more than 50%.
The people of Albania, fearing that the banks would go bankrupt, withdrew their money one after another, preferring to hold it in their hands rather than let it go.
Beginning in 1991, private lending companies began to appear in Albania, which borrowed deposits from the private sector at higher interest rates than banks and lent to Albanian enterprises. In 1991, when Yugoslavia began a civil war, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia and blocked all aid to Yugoslavia. Albania, on the other hand, is next to Yugoslavia and makes a lot of money from financing companies that smuggle Albania. And Albanian financing companies also speculate on real estate, resell foreign exchange, and make money on what they do.
Relying on high profits, interest rates have also risen, and financing groups are willing to pay high interest in order to absorb reserves. In the 1990s, domestic lending companies sprung up, with as many as a hundred in a country of just two million people.
At the end of 1995, the United Nations lifted the sanctions against the Yugoslav parties, there was no longer a need to smuggle goods, the albanian financing group's most important source of income was gone, and the high interest previously promised to the depositors could not be repaid after the smuggling stopped, and soon the Albanian financing group soon had a shortage of funds, but there was no turning back, and the albanian financing groups decided to pay too high interest rates, continue to suck up reserves, and take new debts to pay off old debts. Albania began to follow the path of Ponzi schemes.
In July 1996, the monthly interest rate was raised by 10% and then to 30%. At the beginning of October 1996, the monthly interest rate exceeded 40% and reached 44% at the end of the month. Two months can double the deposit, and such interest rates drive the whole of Albania crazy.
Faced with sky-high interest rates, farmers sold their houses and livestock and lined up to send money to the financing group. As of November 1996, more than a third of albanians had opened accounts with financing groups, and Albania's financing amount reached $2 billion.
Wake up from a dream
In January 1997, the Albanian people had no more money and two large financing groups declared bankruptcy. People across the country began to go to the financing group to run, and soon found that the major financing groups could not come up with a penny.
Soon large-scale riots began in southern Albania. In February 1997, Albania officially fell into civil war, and in March the government completely lost its ability to resist because a large number of military and police officers were also victims of the scam.
After the Albanian unrest, there were many cases of robberies of banks and jewelry stores with heavy arms in Italy and Greece, all of which came to Albania.
In late 1997, the United Nations Security Council authorized eight European countries, including France, to enter Albania to quell unrest. The establishment of a new government will slowly get through the crisis.
After decades of unrest, life for the Albanian people is finally on the right track.